So we've all seen a shape shifter. And we all know that when a shape shifter shifts themselves into another entity, they usually assume the voice of the entity they are copying. Meaning, a perfect imitation of another character's voice is a Required Secondary Power of anyone who would change their physical form.

Being a Voice Changeling, however, requires the distinction between someone who changes their physical form and someone who merely changes their voice. Meaning, while any run-of-the-mill shape shifter can copy a subject's voice, in order to be a Voice Changeling, you've got to perfectly copy a voice without changing your body.

It is important to realize that the Voice Changeling creates a perfect and flawless imitation - not one that is merely different from their own. So in other words, if Bob is annoyed with Alice, and decides to mimic her in his most obnoxious-sounding girl voice, that is not a Voice Changeling. If, however, Bob's imitation of Alice requires a voiceover from the actress who plays Alice, then the trope is in play. As a general rule, it is only a Voice Changeling if there is a momentary change in voice actors. That's the kind of ability we're talking about.

This ability can be a natural gift, or an acquired talent. It can be gained through circumstance, through magic, or through machines. But the important element is not to confuse this trope with Voices Are Mental. Therefore, if some magic turn of events causes a body switch, or if someone gets possessed, then this trope is NOT in effect, no matter how different the voices become. This trope strictly applies to a voluntary ability - Voluntary Shape Shifting, if you will - but only concerning the voice. It's that simple.

Note: A character is only a Voice Changeling when they can imitate an actual voice/means of communication. Meaning, if some character can make non-human sounds that are not associated with a specific character, the trope is not in action. Only when their voice matches that of another character is this trope in effect.

Examples:

There's also Kaito Kid, who can change voices without any device or magic.

And there is Vermouth, while she does not show the huge repertoire as Kaito Kid, she pulls off acting as both Dr. Araide and Jodie. And her own mother. It's basically in-lore that you can't trust ANY voice.

In High School Debut, Asaoka shows the ability to imitate Koh's voice well enough to fool Haruna after they've been going out for some time.

In One Piece, Usopp has a talent for mimicking other people's voices perfectly. He usually uses this just to joke around, but he shows in the Alabasta arc that it's quite useful in combat, using it to defeat Miss Merry Christmas by tricking Mr. 4 into whacking her with his 4-ton bat.

Ryo can make a flawless impression of any voice after hearing it once, often accompanying it with a pathetic disguise.

Silver Fox is implied to be one: he could imitate the voice of a professional photographer well enough to fool his model, and then imitated Ryo's voice well enough to fool Kaori. Kaori still saw through his disguise, but that's because she was expecting something like that and had a test ready (namely, her bra. Silver Fox faked being aroused, but Ryo wouldn't have been).

In Paranoia Agent, Kawazu imitates all of Tsukiko’s coworker’s voices and mannerisms (and makeup) when trying to turn her against them. It starts off as a gag and Tsukiko smiles in what looks like amusement, but as it goes on it gradually stops being funny and Tsukiko stops smiling.

Team Rocket from Pokémon have sometimes used voice-changing megaphones to imitate other characters, including Ash. When Meowth uses one, however, it fails to mask his Brooklyn/Joisey accent.

Diabolik and Eva Kant. They usually combine it with Latex Perfection and very good acting, and between those Altea can't tell her fiancee Ginko from a disguised Diabolik, nor Ginko can tell Altea from a disguised Eva.

While they're the ones who do it most often, the ability is shown to be relatively common, with good actors being able to learn how to imitate at least one voice. Ginko himself has copied multiple voices, and Eva has been impersonated successfully enough to fool Diabolik at least twice.

Miklos, alias the Grey Mouse, as part of him being a Master of Disguise. He's good enough that Mickey can't tell him from O'Hara, and the only one who can reliably tell Mickey from Miklos (his favourite disguise) is Pluto (Minnie too, but it takes her a while and isn't usually sure).

Paperinik New Adventures adds One, Two, Solomon Hicks, Geena, the Raider, Grrodon and Trauma. Most of them are Justified, as One, Two and Solomon are artificial intelligences, Geena is a droid from the 23rd century, the Raider uses 23rd century technology for his disguises and Grrodon is a shape-shiftingalienSuper Soldier. Trauma, on the other hand, is just unexplained.

This Bites!: Soundbite can mimic any sound he's ever heard, backwards, forwards, or any other way you can think of. This is, however, the only way that he can speak, which results in him using an amalgamation of different voices for his sentences. Chapter 17 reveals that he's fully capable of picking one voice and sticking with it, and he explains his reasoning for doing otherwise: when he gives animals the ability to speak with his powers, he determines their voices based on what/who they are. The voices he gives them suit them, but his own voice is all of the voices.

Films — Animation

In Disney's adaptation of Aladdin, Iago shows this ability when impersonating Jasmine and Jafar. His Jasmine impersonation is used to steal the lamp. Hand Waved by him being a parrot.

Disney's telling of Peter Pan has Peter perfectly replicating the voice of Captain Hook. This is used to trick Mr. Smee a number of times.

Tarzan can do this as an extension of his ability to speak with animals. At one point he perfectly imitates a gunshot.

Bambi II eerily depicts a hunter's deer call this way, with Bambi hearing it as his mother's voice.

Films — Live-Action

The killer robots in the Terminator franchise are capable of mimicking people's voices.

In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the T-800 uses John Connor's voice on the phone with the foster parents one of whom is actually the shape-shifting enemy Terminator, using the Required Secondary Power to impersonate the mom while on the phone. This is a throwback to the earlier film The Terminator, where it copies the voice of Sarah Connor's mother.

Also in Terminator Salvation, where a T-101 imitates the teenage Kyle to catch John Connor off guard.

In the movie Scream 3, the Ghostface villain uses a voice changer that mimics many of the other characters's voices. In the rest of the series, Ghostface just uses the device to put on a deep, creepy-sounding voice to mask his or her identity.

Michael Winslow also does this trick in Spaceballs, only he imitates "the bleeps, the sweeps, and the creeps," as well as imitating the sound of speaking through a speaker.

Juni from Spy Kids runs perpendicular to both this and imitating one's voice. Justified as he is just that good. That and he gets it from his mother (although we never hear her do such).

X2: X-Men United: Mystique imitates Colonel Stryker's voice to gain access to his secure files while in her natural blue form. She also mimics Nightcrawler's voice briefly during a conversation with him.

Len Parker in the Apocalypse film series movie Revelation imitates the voices of Thorold Stone's wife and daughter through a walkie-talkie in order to deceive Stone into thinking that he has them in his custody. He even "tells" them to be quiet.

In a throwaway gag in Dogma, Serendipity perfectly imitates Azrael. Justified in that she is a divine being.

This is one of Trantor the troll's abilities in Ernest Scared Stupid, first he imitates Ernest's voice to fool Joey, then later uses Elizabeth's voice to try to lure Kenny to him.

In Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies, the Djinn lures Morgana to the casino over the phone by impersonating the Russian gangster he became acquainted with.

In The Last of Sheila Richard Benjamin imitates James Coburn's voice to make a snarky comment. That prank comes back to trip him up later.

In Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, Evil Robot Bill and Ted imitate the real duo's girlfriend's voices to prank call them into believing they're breaking up with them - all in order to set the real Bill and Ted up for their demise.

Barty Crouch Jr has this ability in the movie version of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. He doesn't have it in the book since Polyjuice Potion allows for vocal mimicry in the books but not the film.

In the Mission: Impossible films, the standard-issue Latex Perfection masks also come with tiny circuitry patches that go over the masked character's throat, altering their voice into a perfect imitation of the target's.

TomJon from Wyrd Sisters has this as a result of the three witches's blessings; Nanny Ogg blessed him that he would "always remember the words", a handy ability for the adopted son of an actor.

Agnes Nitt from Maskerade and Carpe Jugulum has such amazing vocal ability that she can do this. The Vampires in Carpe Jugulum also demonstrate this ability when they're trying to coerce Magrat to unlock the door.

Mort when he was beginning to slip into Death's role, and his daughter Susan when she feels like it, have the ability to speak like Death.

Wayside School's substitute teacher Mr. Gorf steals the kids's voices through his third nostril. He's able to deceive numerous parents, but he gets found out by the lunch lady when he says something uncharacteristically nice using a meaner student's voice.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Tyson, like all cyclopes, can mimic voices and even entire conversations verbatim. It's considered incredibly creepy, so he doesn't use it that frequently.

Konrad Beezo from Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz has the ability to mimic other people's voices with frightening perfection. He's an insane clown with many tricks up his sleeve, and uses this ability, along with some good plastic surgery, to impersonate an FBI agent.

Gandalf in The Hobbit used this trick rather handily against a group of trolls.

In Book of the New Sun, the alzabo is a semi-sentient alien creature that gains access to the memories of anyone that it eats. It also gains the ability to perfectly imitate their voice. It uses these as a hunting technique to lure prey out of hiding, and it is especially effective when it has eaten somebody's loved one.

In Horns, one of the powers Ig develops while transforming into the Big Red Devil is voice mimicry.

Richie Tozier from It has this ability, as one of the uncanny knacks all the kids get after defeating the monster for the first time. It's described as "not an imitation or even a likeness, exactly; it was more like an auditory painting."

In Alexei Pekhov's steampunk novel Mockingbird, the protagonist, Till, belongs to a Master Race called luchars. Each luchar is born with a unique superpower. Till's? Imitating other people's voices and sounds. This "talent" is deemed absolutely useless, but author uses it as a Chekhov's Gun and eventually gives Till his A Job For Aquaman moment.

One of the Gasman's skills in Maximum Ride is the ability to mimic any sound.

In the Brotherband Chronicles by John Flanagan, Stefan is an excellent mimic. He's good enough to completely destroy the other team's tactics in a war game, just by calling out contradictory instructions in their leader's voice.

The wilderness-guide steamman Ironflanks from The Kingdom Beyond The Waves frequently mimics the cries of various jungle animals when he's excited, perfectly re-creating their vocalizations. His human companions take a while to catch on that this isn't just an affectation: he does this to vent excess steam from his boiler without betraying his position to enemies or rainforest predators, the way a normal steamman's pressure-release whistle would.

Live-Action TV

In Scrubs, J.D. has the ability to perfectly mimic Turk's voice. In the solitary occasion we see it, Donald Faison voices over Zach Braff's lipsync. He justifies by having worked on the imitation for years, besides he loses the perfection later in the episode while trying to show off.

In Charmed a few characters are shown to have this ability, complete with actor voiceovers.

In one episode of Power Rangers Time Force, the Monster of the Week has this ability. He uses it to great advantage with Eric's Q-Rex; as is typical for a Sixth Ranger, his Zord was on par with the other five Rangers put together, but the technology controlling it was less advanced, relying on voice recognition rather than DNA recognition.

In "The Savage Curtain", the fake Kahless is able to perfectly mimic the voices of both Surak and Lincoln.

In "A Taste of Armageddon", the High Council of Eminiar 7 uses a voice duplicator to imitate Captain Kirk's voice and order the Enterprise crew to beam down to their doom. William Shatner provided the imitated voice.

In "What Are Little Girls Made Of?", the android Ruk does perfect imitations of Kirk's and Nurse Chapel's voices.

In Star Trek: The Next Generation, Commander Data is shown doing this a few times. First seen in the pilot, when Picard asks him to repeat what he and Q just said.

Notable in that whenever Data imitates Picard (but not other characters), no voiceover from Patrick Stewart was needed, as Brent Spiner is able to do a near perfect Patrick Stewart impression.

For a brief moment in time, Barash, the alien disguised as Commander Riker's future son in the episode "Future Imperfect", perfectly imitates Dr. Crusher's voice.

The '60s TV series Batman - One time Bruce Wayne was missing, so Alfred dressed up in the Batman outfit and talked with Commissioner Gordon and Chief O'Hara. He used a special voice synthesizer to make him sound like Batman, and stood at a distance so they couldn't identify him. "Batman" explained that he had a cold and didn't want them to catch it.

In Supernatural, angels have the ability to imitate voices. In "The Song Remains The Same", Anna uses it when she calls John Winchester posing as his boss to lure him away.

Castiel presumably employed this ability in "Death Takes A Holiday", when he calls the brothers with a job pretending to be Bobby. However, since the call is shown from Sam's perspective, we don't actually see him do it.

In the episode "Long Distance Call", the crocotta has the ability to perfectly mimic voices, which it uses to catch people to eat.

In the story "The Time Monster", the Master tries to trick Sergeant Benton into leaving the TOMTIT device unattended by impersonating the Brigadier over the telephone. However, while the Master does produce a perfect imitation of the Brigadier's voice, he gives himself away by addressing Benton as "my dear fellow", something the real Brigadier would never do.

In "The Masque of Mandragora", the Doctor masquerades as Heironymous by imitating his voice perfectly. Impressively, Tom Baker isn't actually dubbed in the scene, and was doing the impersonation himself.

Cameron from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles can do this. She uses this memorably in one scene, where she's talking to the principal about an emotional rant that a classmate had in the bathroom to Cameron. Cameron usually speaks with a Creepy Monotone, but in this one instance, Cameron recites what the classmate said, word for word, inflection for inflection. It's more than slightly unsettling.

In True Blood, a few vampire characters are able to do this. For example, Bill throws Eric into a pit of wet cement, then calls Pam while pretending to be Eric. At another point, Eric takes out a guard, then imitates the guard and says to his partners that he found nothing.

A mild example in the 2014 version of The Flash. When "the Streak" finally introduces himself to Iris, he disguises his identity as her best friend by keeping his face in the shadows (sometimes rapidly shaking his face to blur it), constantly zipping around, and disguising his voice by vibrating his vocal cords to create a heavy flanging effect. When he later demonstrates the voice to Joe, the latter is amazed that Barry can do it. The Reverse-Flash does the same thing, except he vibrates his whole body to blur it, somehow causes his eyes to glow red, and the voice is a lot more disguised.

Both of the above were achieved through voice changing software in Real Life. Played more straight with Zoom, whose voice actor as Zoom (Tony Todd) is different from the actor playing him, mostly to hide the eventual Reveal. The same thing is done with Savitar, whose voice actor (Tobin Bell) is completely different from Savitar's real identity (Barry Allen's future time remnant).

This trope was used as a one-off gag in an episode of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, when Zack is trying to get the two out of school by perfectly mimicking their mother Carey's voice. He does it again after Cody compliments him, telling him to tuck in his shirt.

Dorian in Almost Human can do this. John hates it when Dorian imitates him.

Person of Interest. The Machine and Samaritan are capable of this, despite usually communicating with either a mish-mash of assembled voice clips or via human avatars. A chilling example occurs in "QSO" when the host of a Conspiracy Theory radio show has stumbled on a secret that Samaritan would rather did not get out. During a live broadcast, his soundboard and phone lines go dead, yet he continues to hear his own voice talking over the radio, announcing that he intends to commit suicide.

Angel had Dennis' mother, as a ghostly spirit mimicking Angel's voice to lure Cordelia inside the haunted apartment she built.

This is Suki Sato's power in Tower Prep, allowing her to perfectly copy any voice she hears.

Myths & Religion

Echo in Classical Mythology was famous for having a gift with speaking and a beautiful voice — but one day she misused her ability, and Hera cursed her to only ever repeat the last thing that had been said to her. Eventually her heart was broken so that she faded away to nothing but her voice — and obviously, an echo can always reproduce exactly what was said before.

In Japanese legend, the ape-like youkai known as "Yamabiko" are known for stalking people in the mountains, terrorizing them by repeating everything they say back to them in their own voice. Now, guess what "yamabiko" means in Japanese...?

The Leucrotta or Crocotta, a hooved hyena-like creature with a lion's tail and jagged bone instead of teeth, is described in medieval bestiaries as capable of imitating humans to attract curious people or dogs to be eaten.

Pinballs

One-Eye the talking skull from Bone Busters speaks in a variety of voices and pitches.

"Mommy? Mommy, is that you? Please! I'm in here. It's so dark! I can't see you, Mommy... come closer."

Arduin RPG, The Compleat Arduin Book 2: Resources. The Greater Demon Gorog-Nor, the Hungry One, can mimic the voices of creatures he eats. He uses this ability to lure the victim's friends to him so he can devour them as well.

The monster known as the leucrotta can mimic the voice of any creature it has heard in order to lure its prey into an ambush.

The Kenku, a race of humanoid corvids, also do this in place of having an actual language of their own, since they can only mimic back voices or words they've heard before.

Toys

The Oohnorak spiders of BIONICLE use Telepathy to read the minds of their victims, then mimic the voice of a person they know to lure them into a trap. Otherwise, they can't actually talk (aside from their own spider language, of course).

Video Games

Chisato of Suikoden V is known as The Woman of a Thousand Voices, and for good reason: she can do astounding things with her voice. Her range is so fantastic that, at one point, she perfectly duplicates the voice of a pirate captain to trick his crew into lowering their guard at a critical moment. As a member of the Loyalist Army, she also functions as the Voice Changer, enabling the player to alter the sound of the Prince's voice.

The Qurupeco from Monster Hunter Tri, it can mimic an array of monster cries. Which can turn a simple hunt into a nightmare

Peter Pan once again demonstrates this ability of his in Kingdom Hearts, drawing Captain Hook out of hiding by imitating Smee's voice from the other side of a door.

Both Alex Mercer from [PROTOTYPE] and James Heller from [PROTOTYPE 2] can use the voice of anyone they shapeshift into after eating them. Mercer uses this to call artillery strikes at desired targets. Interestingly, this apparently requires additional conscious effort (given both characters, while disguised, grunt and monologue in their default voises), leading, at one point, to this gem:

Willis from Awful Hospital can "recreate almost any voice to perfection." Pretty good for someone with no discernible mouth.

Web Original

One of the powers Vox uses the most in the Whateley Universe. She's a Siren, so she can do a lot more than just Voice Changeling. Including perfectly imitating a pop singer and the singer's backup singers and the singer's background musicians, all at the same time.

In Worm, Screamer, a former member of the Slaughterhouse Nine, could mimic people's voices, which she used to sow chaos and disrupt communications.

The SCP Foundation holds several specimens of SCP-939, which that can perfectly imitate the voices of dead humans. This of their tools used to lure in prey. Naturally, this is one of their less creepy traits.

Red Panda Adventures supervillain the Crimson Death has voice changing among his Combo Platter Powers, taken from a low level supervillain called Mockingbird. He doesn't use it as part of his plans often, however he has a different voice every time he appears. This has been used to hide the fact he's the villain of the week.

The titular monster from the Crypt TV short The Mimic can copy voices near perfectly to distract and lull prey.

An episode of Futurama had Prof. Farnsworth invent a machine that made anyone sound like him (needless to say it was quickly borrowed by Hermes's son Dwight and Farnsworth's clone Cubert). His explanation?

The Parasite can mimic the voices of people whose energy he's absorbed. In his debut episode, he power-drains Clark / Superman and imprisons him so he can keep feeding. When Clark points out his co-workers will start asking questions, Parasite reveals he can perfectly mimic Clark's voice, allowing "Clark" to call in sick.

Subverted in My Life as a Teenage Robot, when Jenny provides a spot-on impression of her mother...by playing a tape she has recorded internally. She puts on her mother's glasses for full effect.

In an episode of Rugrats, Angelica steals an invention of Stu's which allows her to speak in the voice of her mother Charlotte, she uses it to buy things and throw a party for herself. Though it still contains her usual childish inflections such as "bestest" and "ezackly".

Arnold does a perfect impression of his grandpa over the phone as he calls in sick to school when he and Gerald cut class.

In the Donkey Kong Country episode "Kong for a Day", Krusha uses his imitation of DK's voice to insult Dixie and Diddy, making the both of them get angry at DK.

In the DuckTales (1987) episode "Armstrong", Armstrong perfectly imitates Gyro's voice to deter the triplets from coming to investigate.

One episode of American Dad! had Francine do this to Stan during her "kidnapping" of Roger.

In "The Wild, Wild Goose Chase," Danger Mouse does an uncannily accurate imitation of Baron Greenback's voice in order to operate a device that will tell Greenback where his next hideout will be when present coordinates are entered.

In G.I. Joe: Renegades, Zartan has the ability to perfectly mimic any voice he hears. When he was just a gang leader, it was primarily a tool to torment his victims, but it becomes especially useful after he gains possession of a device that can project holographic disguises onto himself, making said disguises virtually flawless.

In Transformers Animated, Soundwave utilizes his voice-modulation systems to forge messages on the phone line and Autobot comlink.

In Transformers: Generation 1's third season, Starscream's ghost uses this ability when he possesses and poses as other Decepticons. He and Octane also joke about this trope, taking turns imitating each other.

The Fairly Oddparents episode "Hassle in the Castle" shows that Timmy can perfectly imitate Wanda's voice.

In an earlier short that was presented on Oh Yeah! Cartoons, "The Really Bad Day," Timmy calls up Vicky to try and get a bad idea for Cosmo to carry out. He disguises his voice to pretend to be a "completely random survey", and pulls off a perfect deep, smooth adult male voice while doing so.

In the Littlest Pet Shop (2012) episode "Gailbreak!", Blythe, Russell, and Sunil attempt to break their friends and Zoe's sister Gail out of Largest Ever Pet Shop's day camp, but can't get past Monban, the robot security guard that only responds to the Biskits' voice. They devise a plan in which they attach a pair of cordless headphones to Monban's auditory sensors, and Blythe, over a walkie-talkie, perfectly mimics the Biskit Twins' voice note Both twins are voiced by Shannon Chan-Kent to command the robot to release the pets in the day camp.

Blythe:[in the Biskit Twins' voice] Monban, can't you do anything right? You should totally go release the pets like, now!

In Camp Lazlo, Clam can mimic people's voices, as shown in the episode "Being Edward".

In one episode, the gang tries to prank-call people by imitating Principal Pixiefrog. Adam and Slips do bad imitations, while Jake does it perfectly and manages to fool Pixiefrog himself.

Jake also does it in another episode, where he imitated Pixiefrog over the school's intercom, and again fooling the real deal.

In Stōked, Reef does a perfect impersonation of Mr. Ridgemount to distract Bummer away from the phone.

Cyborg on Teen Titans Go! once mimicked his own grandmother's vocal tones to taunt a villain, only to find himself adopting her personality when his voice got stuck that way for days.

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show: In "Hooded Robin and his Mario Men", the hero Hooded Robin can imitate any voice. When Mario and his friends get captured in the beginning, Hooded Robin imitates King Koopa's voice and orders the mooks to leave, then frees them. Later, he imitates a girl's voice to lure a guard away.

Rocky and Bullwinkle: Played with in a "Fan Club" sketch, where Boris does impression act for a telethon and pulls of a perfect imitation of Bullwinkle. It turns out the "imitation" is his real voice, and that his "normal" voice is just a bad accent.

In Filmation's Ghostbusters, Belfry's cousin Beauregard is capable of deceiving the bad guys by imitating voices, flawlessly imitating Prime Evil's voice in episode "Country Cousin" and that of Jake Kong in "Whither Why".

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